


The Winter-Born Children

by Quietbang



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anders is a healer and that is important, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical Disability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Realistic depictions of disability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3509552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietbang/pseuds/Quietbang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this <a> prompt</a> on the Dragon Age Kink Meme. </p><p>Claes Jonnasen was the winter-born son of a winter-born mother, and there should have been no hope for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of four chapters and will be updated weekly, on Sundays. Warnings for ableism, internalised ableism, some ableist language, and implications of past abuse and sexual abuse.  
> I am writing this as a disabled person who has been physically disabled since birth, and for whom walking has always been very difficult. Many of Anders' experiences mirror my own, but there is obviously not just one way to be disabled and I would never suggest his or my experience are the avatar for All Disabled People.

**9:7 Dragon**  
The winter-born children were all small, that year. 

The winter-born usually were, of course. Too small and delicate by half, wide bony chests and knobbly, half-turned knees. Sometimes they were born blue and yellow and there was nothing the Chantry healers could do but commend their newborn souls to the maker. 

Mother Atta said that you could tell a winter-born child even in adulthood; that the sway of their hips and thin, pinched skin is all you needed. 

Claes Jonnasen was the winter-born son of a winter-born mother, and there should have been no hope for him. That spring there had been terrible storms, uprooting seeds and saplings alike, and the winter had come harder and quicker than was its custom. By the 9th of Guardian, many were dead and hungry—the cold, no matter how brutal, did not stop the Darkspawn, and the sheep milk had long since dried up. To give birth in such an environment should have been a death sentence. 

Yet Jonna lived. 

Poor, pretty Jonna Eîdnosdottir, with curling blonde locks, a soft complexion, and no husband to speak of. She had arrived alone at the beginning of Harvestmere, pledged herself to Farmer Àigin for some room in the barns, and he had agreed. She had chosen well- despite the poor harvest, Àigin was a kindly man, the loss of his own wife and daughter to the darkspawn too recent for him to turn away a young woman in distress. 

When it became apparent that she was with child, he should have thrown her on the mercy of the Chantry- instead, he insisted that she take up spinning the slim wool harvest, and leave the weeding and hoeing to more able workers. He would not have her lose the baby. 

And so Claes was born on the 9th of Guardian, a storm howling outside, a Chantry healer helping ably as Jonna panted and cried and bit down on a chunk of leather when the pains became too great. He had the small bones, the rounded legs, of so many of the children that winter, and the healer had shaken her head and gone to bless him, when Jonna had cried out. 

“My baby! I want to see him,” 

The others in the room—Healer Gàhte, Elder Liljà, and their assistants- shared a grim look. It was not wise to let a mother see such a child. It would only make it harder for her to lose him. 

One of the assistants shook her head, and reached for the small, cold form. “At least let her see him,”  
She said. “It can do no harm.” 

The cord had been clipped and the boy wrapped, and so it was a small matter to loose him from his swaddlings and lay him on Jonna’s breast. 

She smiled, and then frowned. “He looks like me,” she said, wonderingly. “It seems strange to see it in such a little body. He’s so cold.” 

She began rubbing his back fervently, as though she could will him to warm, will him to live. She bent her head tightly against his neck and whispered something only he could hear. 

And he began to cry. 

Claes was the only living baby that winter, and it should have been enough—but times were hard, and it was not until his third name day that their stores had recovered sufficiently from the storms of 9:08 Dragon to celebrate it with anything other than thin malav soup and a tight hug. 

He does not walk until his fourth summer. Even then, it seems to pain him—taking quick, rolling steps and falling too frequently to be of any use in the fields. Instead, Jonna sends him to the Chantry by the day, and at night he curls next to her on their pallet in Farmer Àigin’s home and whispers to her of the things he has learned.  
The Chantry school taught the Chant, of course- but also herbalism and trapmaking, and his proudest moment came in his tenth fall when he brought a brace of gerbils back with him from traps he had set in the outfield. Jonna smiled, kissed his forehead lightly, and they feasted. 

By then, Farmer Àigin had fashioned him a small stick to walk with, and it seemed to help. His balance was still poor, and sometimes at night Jonna would be woken with a growing wetness against her back as the boy tried to muffle his tears of pain—but he did well enough. 

He was well liked, well-thought of, and Mother Atta took Jonna aside one day and asked if she had thought that he might be a Brother. 

“He’ll be no good in a field or as a Templar,” she said matter-of-factly. “Not with those legs. But he’s so attentive in lessons. Sister Alis is teaching him to read and figure, you know.”

Jonna hadn’t known. 

“She may teach him Common, if this goes well,” Mother Atta added. 

As things happened, she never had the chance.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 **9:33 Dragon, 3rd Cloudreach**  
"You're lying to him," the elf said flatly. 

Anders bit his lip. "I'm not," He said quietly, turning to rearrange his stores. 

"Glamours are not effective on me," Fenris said. 

Anders blinked, and turned slowly to face him. "What do you mean?"

"I thought at first that you had been hobbled," Fenris said slowly. "But that is not the case, is it?"

Anders bit his lip, tilting his chin towards his chest. Then he frowned, and lifting his face defiantly towards Fenris. 

"I _have_ been hobbled," Anders said. 

"Yes, yes," Fenris said dismissively, "But that is not it. It's-- in Tevinter they call it the elvhen disease." 

Anders closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. "Yes, and in Kirkwall they call it the darktown disease, and in Ferelden it's the alienage disease, and in Orlais it's the Fereldan disease. It's hardly surprising." 

Fenris arched an eyebrow delicately. "And what do they call it in the Anderfels?"

Anders snorted. "The _vinter sjukdomen_. The winter disease." 

Fenris nodded, slowly. "Why not just heal it?" He asked suspiciously. 

Anders sighed, reaching down to grip his workbench tightly. "It cannot be healed. I see infants with it all the time-- they need good food and sunshine, not magic. I send their mothers off with an elfroot potion and whatever food I can spare. Sometimes it is enough. Other times, it's not. And if it is not healed when the child is still young, then it stays with them forever." 

Fenris eyed him. "You hide it well." 

Anders snorted. "Well, as you so astutely pointed out, there is a minor glamour on them. But aside from that-- it is possible to cast a sort of sustaining magic on it, like I sometimes do on you and Hawke in battle to make you take less damage. It does not heal it, not properly, but it does-- it can stop it from hurting too acutely, from causing more damage. I try to use such spells sparingly- they use a lot of mana, and with the kind of messes Hawke gets us into I need all of that that I can get." He shrugged.  
"I don't cast anything on it when I'm in the clinic. The people of Darktown are used to such things." 

Fenris nodded. "That is... understandable." 

Anders pursed his lips. "Are you going to tell him?" 

Fenris studied him carefully. 

"It is not blood magic," Anders said hurriedly. "Just a simple glamour, you can make one even without magic, hell, _Isabella_ can make them in her sleep. Please."

Fenris frowned. "Were you truly a Warden? Do you truly have these maps that he requires?"

Anders nodded fervently. "I was. I do. I would not lie about something like that. I knew the Hero of Ferelden from the tower- she would have recruited me, I think, even if I were not any good in a fight, but she knew that I could handle myself. _Please_. I have not lied to you. Not to any of you. Not about this. They simply did not ask. It is not hard to see through a glamour charm, if you look. Most people simply do not." 

Fenris nodded. "I know. I was trained to do so. There is no sense in having a body guard who can be tricked by any third-rate assassin or rogue in Minrathous." He studied Anders carefully, who was stone-faced, the only sign of tension his white-knuckled grip on the workbench. "Very well, mage. I will keep your secret for as long as it is reasonable. If I think you are a danger--" 

"--I understand," Anders said quickly. "I-- I would expect nothing less." 

"Good." Fenris turned to leave, and glanced back over his shoulder. "I am watching you, mage." 

"I understand," Anders said again. 

The elf nodded, and walked out into the darkness of Darktown, leaving Anders alone with his thoughts.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 **9:33 Dragon, 7th Firstfall**

Winter was coming. 

The winters in Kirkwall were nothing like those he had known as a child, when the cold winds and ice blew away the grass and sand until there was nothing but cold barren land and hunger as far as the eye could see. They were nothing like the winters in the tower, where the wet cold of the Ferelden winter seemed to permeate the very stone, but which was always held off by the tower's large fireplaces and the ever-present pots of tea in the dining hall. 

In Kirkwall, it rained. It rained, and the wind blew, and the water levels rose until they threatened to flood. Darktown, at the bottom of the winding Dwarven streets, was where it all drained to. 

The streets were muddy, soaked with several inches of water that crept up over shoes and soaked into legging, filthy water that carried with it not just the winter fever and the morphew, as was the case in every city in Thedas, but also the bronze jack and the jail fever and dysentry and cholera. Darktown was a river of piss and shit and death, and there was only so much he could do.  
\--  
Every healer has a moment when they realise that they cannot save everyone. 

For Anders, that moment came when he was very young-- 16 and screaming, locked in solitary without his staff to stand with, his knobbly right knee puffy and black and bleeding from the blow from a sword's pommel. He lay there for two weeks, that time, and by the time he got out he was red and yellow with fever, shaking fit to burst, and despite the shouting of Wynne and Karl and Irving the subsequent investigation ruled that he must have shattered his knee with a fall onto the stone floor. After all, Anders was always falling.  
\--

Darktown was a river of piss and shit and death, and he could not save everyone, but that did not mean that his failures were not writ large in his fragile bones. 

With every howl of the wind and crack of thunder he felt the ache in his legs and back grow worse. 

He had not travelled with Hawke lately-- fortunate, as he did not have the patience nor the mana to fight and keep the healing magic centred on his legs. 

Besides, he was so busy it was unconscionable. There was no way for him to leave now, not with the state this city and her people were in. 

If only he weren't so damn tired. It was getting hard to stand, and for the last hour of his clinic he had sat carefully on a stool and had one of the older Darktown children who hung around his clinic to assist patients in transferring themselves to the top of his cleaned work surface. 

Well, it had started the day clean, at any rate. Now it was filthy, blood and shit clinging to it with an acrid odour. He had to clean everything, before he could sleep. He had to wash everything, had to make new poultices and potions, had to prepare tomorrows packages of salve and disinfecting powder that each patient with the jail fever got sent home with. Even if it was just a hovel or a lean-to in an alley way, cleaning the dishes and the kettles they boiled the filthy water in would go a long way to stop it spreading. 

He was so tired. His bones ached, his legs shook, and with every tremor he felt the panic rising in his chest. 

It happened sometimes. The cold and the pain reminded him of the tower- or maybe that wasn't quite right, and it simply made him anxious, reminded him of his relative helplessness, or maybe-- 

The truth was that he didn't know why it happened, only that it did. He hadn't really realised that it did until he was living in the tower, and Neria had taken him aside and told him that if he couldn't stop snapping at the trainees and his fellow wardens then he had best confine himself to making potions in the infirmary until the weather changed. 

Neria had always been like that. When an Anders boy with shaking legs and not a word of Common had first arrived at the tower, she had befriended him immediately. She never managed to learn Anders, despite her many attempts, but as he progressed in his lessons in Common she began to tell him about books that she had read, about types of healing and sustaining spells. 

\---

"I can't do them, because I'm a force mage," she had said matter-of-factly, blinking up at him owlishly beneath heavy black braids. "But I bet you can! You haven't picked a specialty yet, right? You're still with the babies." 

Anders had flushed, and said, haltingly, that he was still learning. 

"You should be a healer, then." She had said brightly. "I bet Karl-- or, sorry, Enchanter Thekla, now-- I bet he would help you. He's a healing mage, too."

Anders nodded slowly. "I-- could. Yes. He has been-- very helpful. Nicer than the others." 

Neria has pouted. 

"Except you," Anders said with a smile. "You are of course the nicest. Even if you cannot say my name." 

She had flicked him in the shoulder. "Nobody can say your name, silly Anders. There isn't a sound for it in Common, that's what Karl said." 

"Karl—has too much forgiveness. There is a sound. You are just lazy." 

She flicked him again. "Easy for you to say." 

"Yes," Anders said simply. 

\---

He broke out of his reverie, leaning heavily on his staff. He was alone. He was alone. There was nobody else in the clinic, and the rain and wind were howling outside, and the dirt floor was growing suspiciously soggy. There was so much to do, and so little time, and he wanted nothing more than to dose himself heavily with embrium and poppias juice, until the pain grew hazy and distant and he could curl up tightly beneath his blankets, safe from the outside world. 

Everything seemed so much harder when he was like this. 

He cursed as he took a shaking step over to the table. His balance was not good right now. He was not sure that he could make it. He did not like to use magic for such simple tasks as cleaning or lighting a fire- lyrium was expensive, and between the many plagues of Darktown and Hawke's propensity for getting himself gnawed on by dragonlings he needed all of the mana he could get. 

Tonight, he would make an exception. He really was so tired, and his heart was beating fit to burst in his narrow chest. With every bang and rustle and howl of the wind, he had to resist the urge to throw himself into a corner and call on his defensive magic. 

It was stupid. It was ludicrous. Nobody was going to hurt him. The Templars did not even know he was there, and if they did, they would surely think twice before coming through the rivers of Darktown piss. 

Winter was the safest time of the year, for him. Varric had paid of the Coterie this month, and Isabela had thanked him for some of his salves and potions by placing several defensive traps around his windows and the sewer grate and changing his locks. 

\---

"Only I can pick them now," she had said with a grin, "And you don't mind if I come in uninvited, do you pretty boy?" 

Anders had frowned, lips set in what he hoped was a disapproving purse. "You keep telling yourself that, Izzy. I may have many fond memories of you, but some things are better left to be reflected on, don't you think?"

"You're just out of practice, or you wouldn't be saying such a thing," Isabela had responded with a laugh. But fair enough. Keep your virtue, if you had any to begin with." 

"My _virtue_ , as you so delicately put it, hasn't been on offer since I was 14." 

She laughed. "I'm surprised you had it in you." 

"I'd only been at the tower two years. Never underestimate the power of novelty." 

"I wouldn't dream of it, sweet thing." She had kissed him on the cheek and sashayed out of the clinic. 

For two weeks after, the Darktown children told stories and played gamed pretending to be 'the beautiful lady pirate with a heart of gold'. Anders had not had the heart to dissuade them, although he had taken note of some of the more outrageous dialogue the children had invented to tell the others at their next game night. 

\---

So he was safe, and he was alone. He was safe and he was alone and he was in his clinic in Darktown, not back home with hunger gnawing at his belly and his mother lying next to him on the bed, skin hot and fever-dry. Not in the tower, nor on the run, nor in one of the cells deep beneath Lake Calenhad where he had spent so much of his adolescence crying and puking and fearing and bleeding. He was alone, in his clinic, in one of the first places he could call his own. 

In Vigil's Keep, he had known a spirit of Justice. Nice guy, really. A bit stiff on human interactions, and inhabiting a man’s corpse, but nonetheless nice enough. He had come upon Anders one evening, pacing shakily in the Great Hall, leaning heavily on his staff. 

\---

**"You do not walk like other humans."**

"Very observant, Justice." 

**"Why is this the case? I have seen in Kristoff's memories the results of great battles. Some of the warriors were maimed such as you. In which battle did you fight? Was the cause just?"**

Anders had smiled, quicksilver-bright and fast, and replied. "Oh, I wish, Justice. It would have done me a great service with the ladies and gentlemen." 

Justice had frowned. **"You did not answer the question."**

"No, I suppose I didn't. Humans do that sometimes, you know. Avoiding the question when it is not something they wish to talk about. Don't spirits do the same?"

**"No"**

"Fair enough." Anders had swallowed, his stomach clenching. "I was born like this. Or so I'm told. In the land where I was born, many such children are born each winter, especially when there has been a poor harvest and the mothers' milk runs dry. Most of them die young. I did not. Or I haven't yet, anyway. I'm only on my twenty-sixth summer, I'm sure that if I were to die tomorrow that is sufficiently young for the bards to deem it a tragic loss of youth." 

**"Why would this happen?"**

"Right, spirit, you don't understand about food or sex or anything. That's unfortunate. Or fortunate, really, since I guess that would make you a demon. I don't like demons very much. They were nasty sods when I was ten, and they're nasty sods now." 

**"You are avoiding the question again."**

"Right. So, humans need food. You know that at least? Good. Well, when a pregnant woman is unable to eat enough, or eat the right things, sometimes her baby is born-- different. The Chantry teaches that it is a curse the Marker places on the children of the unworthy, but that's not true-- the winter disease has been around for thousands of years, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything except the state of the harvest and that harshness of the winter. When the winter is particularly harsh, or food is particularly scarce, you get children like me, born with knock-knees." 

**"Is there such hunger in your land that many children are born like this?"**

"In _my_ land? Absolutely. Here? When we were young, Neria told me that most of the babies like me in Ferelden are born in alienages, but I'll bet the Blight has changed that. There's not much food in being a refugee, especially with so many of the fields ravaged by the 'spawn." 

Justice had nodded. **"I thank you for telling me of this injustice. I must think. Leave me."**

"What? You were the one who interrupted me?"

Justice had stared at him impassively, and Anders had sighed and gone to his quarters anyway. 

\--

Vigil's Keep had seemed like home, and he had been happy- despite the Darkspawn and the bandits and the thrice-blighted Deep Roads, he had been happy enough working with Neria, alternately flirting and fighting with Nathaniel, and mostly avoiding Oghren on grounds of scent alone. When Neria had helped him destroy his phylactery, it had only secured what he had been feeling all along. He was good at running, but he would stay with the Wardens. 

Then Neria left, on a mission which stretched from days to weeks to months, and the new Warden Commander had been an Orlesian former Templar, who was keen to fill the ranks with _other_ Orlesian former Templars. He had questioned Anders' right to be there, Anders' capabilities, insisted on relieving him of his stick and staff and salves, because if he couldn't complete missions without them then he wasn't worthy of being a Warden. He had made him abandon Pounce, and Anders had cried bitterly and convinced Nathaniel's sister to take him in so that he could at least visit his pretty orange cat. 

The new recruits were suspicious of him on principle, as a free mage. They took great delight in poking at his legs and back, and clapping his shoulder with blows just this side of painful but too nonchalant to be considered anything other than friendly by witnesses. They moved his things and laughed when he had to find them on shaking legs. 

One of them had taken his embrium and poppias potion, and ordered him to pleasure him if he wished to have it returned. He refused for a week, until he came back from a routine patrol that had left him shaking with pain. 

He did it, and added another strike to the litany written across his useless body of reasons to hate himself. 

He had run, then. It was too much like the Tower, too much like solitary, too much like a lifetime of being kicked and stepped on and stepped over and mocked. It was too much.

He had felt guilty about doing so-- had told nobody, leaving in the dead of night. The only thing left in his quarters were two sealed and signed enveloped addressed to Nathaniel and Neria, enchanted to be unsealable by any but the intended recipients. 

\--

Now he was here, alone and in the only place he had properly called home since he was 12, and he was terrified. It didn't make any sense, but so much about him didn't make sense. Maybe he had lost too much.  
(He saw that sometimes, with the Blight survivors sprinkled amongst the Darktown refugees. Even the youngest ones seemed too old by half, and those who had seen their villages and homes burn would never forget it. Anders didn't know what that was like. He had never had a home to burn.)

He felt pain crackle along his nerves, extending out from his bowed hips like the shadow left in the night air by a spark or a lightning bug. 

A thundershower had begun, and with every bolt of lightning he felt his hair stand up and his legs twitch in agony. 

With a great effort, he limped over to his cot, and pulled his stash of lyrium potions out from under it. 

Sitting down, he could actually see the soft and emaciated flesh of his hips twitch in time with the lighting, like some kind of macabre Orlesian firework. 

He cast a cleansing charm over the infirmary, and the smell of shit and blood began to fade. Leaning on one arm, forcing himself to sit upright, he cast several small, controlled fireballs at the iron bowl which contained his filthy instruments, and the sickly-sweet caramel smell of burning blood descended over the clinic. With a tired wave of his trembling hand, he cast another barrier at the clinic door, preventing more water from rushing in from the flooded streets outside. 

He collapsed back onto his cot, exhausted. He would have to rise early the next day to restock his potions. Right now, he did not think he could sit long enough to do so, or even if his shaking hands would obey him well enough to follow the proper preparation. 

He did not sleep well, normally, and the pain only increased that problem. He did not like taking the embrium and poppias potion-- for all that it dulled the pain, it also dulled his wits, made him pliant and confused, and he knew that it would be all too easy to take advantage of him in such a state. It wasn't safe, doing that regularly. 

Tonight, however, he would not sleep otherwise. He felt his lips part in a low, involuntary whine as another pulse of pain echoed down his legs.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to die. He wanted to _sleep_. 

Last week he had performed some discrete services for the city nobility, the kind that a wayward younger son would not dare take to a Chantry healer. With the three sovereigns he had earned from the task, he had restocked his meagre stores and used the last 20 silvers to have Worthy enchant a piece of polished silverite to vibrate after a period of time, which could be set by knocking it against a wall to indicate a set of sixty. He knocked it against the sandstone walls of the clinic four times. That would be enough, surely. There would be patients here by daybreak, and he needed to be ready. 

He reached under his bed again and pulled out his bottle of embrium and poppias, and drank deeply. 

Within seconds, he could feel its cloudy fingers pressing over him, as the pain was muffled and he fell, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep. 

The potion did its job, and he woke with groggy, sleep-filled eyes and a cotton-mouth only after the silverite had been vibrating beneath his pillow for several minutes. 

He was still feeling quite hazy, which is why he did not notice the presence in his clinic until he turned to push himself off of the bed with the assistance of his staff and found himself staring into bright, grass-green eyes. 

"Oh, hello, Anders. I'm so glad you're finally awake. I've been standing here for nearly an hour." Merrill trilled.

Anders blinked. 

Sensing she had put him ill at ease, she hastened to reassure him. "Don't worry, I didn't dismantle your traps or anything. Isabella's in the front room."


	2. Chapter 2

**9:33 Dragon, 8th Firstfall**  
Anders sat up straight, biting his lip to stifle a gasp of pain as the quick movement jostled his bad legs.  
He breathed deeply, letting the white-hot mist dispel from before his eyes before he spoke. 

“What on earth are you two doing here?” He glared at Isabella, who merely smirked. “Clinic’s closed. Healer’s having a day off.” 

Merrill blushed. “Oh, Anders, I’m sorry, it’s just—well Isabella said—we only thought—“ 

Anders sighed. “What is it, ladies?”

Isabella smiled, but her eyes were serious. “There’s a riot in the alienage. They need a healer.” 

Anders sat up straighter, and swung his legs to the side of the bed. “A riot? Over what?”

“The Viscount raised the tax on rye flour. Not on wheat flour, mind—the man’s an idiot, but he knows where his bread is buttered. If you’ll pardon the pun.” 

“I make it a point not to pardon anything you do, wench,” Anders muttered as he began rummaging in the crate under his bed for his clean smalls and leggings. 

She smiled. “Ooh, Anders, you’re sanctimonious when you’re cranky. What an interesting side of you.” 

“Please come, Anders,” Merrill interrupted, perhaps sensing that the two humans were easily (and mutually) distracted. “The Chantry won’t help, and the Guard were on horseback when they came to put down the rioters. There are many wounded, I couldn’t count how many, and only a few dead.” 

Anders nodded seriously, all-business now. “I understand. Merrill, if you check in the chest over by the firepit, there are fresh bandages and healing poultices. Isabela, my lyrium potions and boiled catgut are just inside the trap door. You might want to grab some raw elfroot as well, chewing it will stave off shock. Oh, and—“ he fell silent for a moment, but his pride was not worth people’s lives. “My staff, please.” 

“You’ve got your staff,” Isabela pointed out. “Getting senile in your old age, sweet thing?”

He shook his head. “Wrong one. Hawke gave me this one. Under the cot furthest from the door, I need that one. You’ll see why.” 

The other staff had been a gift from Neria. Enchanted ironwood, with no ornamentation save an embedded life rune, it was sturdy enough to serve as a walking stick, and dextrous enough for healing if not for offensive magic. 

Cursing under his breath as his muscles protested and he tried to control his breathing, he cast the sustaining spells on his knees. He breathed a slight sigh of relief when he finished, the sharp, hot-iron pain now buffered by the cooling tingle of magic. 

“You won’t have time for the glamour,” Isabela said matter-of-factly as she handed him his staff. 

Anders’ face burned. “You knew?”

“I wouldn’t make a very good rogue if I couldn’t spot a ten-silver glamour charm, Anders.” 

Anders nodded, conceding the point. 

“Please don’t tell Hawke.” 

Isabela eyed him for a moment before nodding brusquely. “I won’t, but more to teach him a lesson about learning to spot traps than anything else. I swear, you’d never know the man was a warrior the way he carries on about learning things that could be useful in combat.” 

“It’s the detail work,” Anders said absently as he began lacing his leggings tightly, thankful for the support bracing he had sewn in for such days as this one. “Patience isn’t our Hawke’s strong suit.”

Ten minutes later, they were on their way to the alienage. Even from Darktown, you could hear the sound of screams and whistles. This was big. 

Anders winced as his knee buckled as he took the stairs to Lowtown, barely catching himself with his staff. 

Isabela watched him carefully. “You need a hand, you say the word, Anders.” 

Anders nodded and gritted his teeth against the unpleasant grinding sensation in his joints that not even the sustaining spell could muffle. “It’s not normally this bad.” 

Isabela nodded as they turned the corner towards the alienage. Lowtown’s streets were packed, guards marching double-time towards the alienage battling for position with curious rubberneckers and crying elves who had fled the scene of the riot. 

Anders breathed carefully. The pain was intense, it was beginning to overwhelm him, he felt his breath coming in short pants and a hot white mist beginning to descend over his eyes—

“—Keep talking, sweet thing, we’re almost there,” Isabela said conversationally. “Why is it so bad today?”

Anders shrugged with one shoulder. “Weather. Winter. Rain. The Maker-cursed plague that means I haven’t had a solid night’s rest in two weeks. The fact that yesterday I ran out of embrium and spent two hours before dawn walking up and down the Wounded Coast. There are a lot of things.” 

By the time he had finished speaking, they were at the alienage. Anders took in the chaos with a practiced eye. 

The streets were muddy, the wind howling through the leaves of the vhenedhal. The guards were leaving on horseback, having clearly finished their work—leaving behind stands of shattered wood and numerous people lying on the ground. Some were moaning, clutching wounds to the head, while others—the most worrying, were pale and silent, their bellies turning black with pooling blood.  
He would have to work fast. 

He looked at Merrill. “Try and organise the unwounded,” he ordered. “We’ll be needing boiled water, and lots of it. Any elfroot anyone can spare. If someone looks shaky, but they don’t seem to be hurt, have them chew on the leaves.” 

To Isabela he said “Have they got the wounded moved yet?” 

She shook her head. “We came and got you as soon as the violence started. Damned guards.” 

Anders nodded, then blinked as something occurred to him. “Remind me after this to ask you why you were with Merrill in the alienage at this time of the morning.” 

She winked. “Oh, I think you know.” Then she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled, sharply. The closest elves turned to look at each other. 

“The Darktown Healer is here,” she said loudly, “Move any badly injured next to the vhenedhal. Quickly, people!” 

Anders stitched and cut, cauterised and cleaned. When necessary, he sent subtle tendrils of healing magic through the elvhen wounded, mending organs and staunching bleeding. 

By midday, all the guard and human rubberneckers had left, leaving behind broken stands and homes and people. 

Anders groaned when he realised the time and how many people he had yet to heal. Reaching into the money purse on his belt, he tossed two sovereigns to Isabela. 

“Buy as many buns as the Hanged Man will give you for this,” he ordered, “And distribute them amongst those who have already been healed. See if Merrill knows where the drinking water is pumped from, and then get any volunteers to fill buckets. These people need food and rest. Try and get them inside, wherever you can—the water in the streets will make their wounds fester.”

By sunfall, he was finished. He tried to stand from the spot on the ground where he had been tending the wounded, his robes sodden with mud and blood and viscera, but found that he couldn’t. His vision swam in front of him, and his hands were trembling. 

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Anders,” he heard Isabela say through the mist. “You have to at _least_ give a girl a challenge.” He felt the ground recede away from him, and he allowed his eyes to close as he was carried away into the darkness. 

**9:33 Dragon, 13th Haring**  
"You know, you don't have to come," Hawke said slowly as he watched Anders putter around in the clinic, stirring a large iron pot of boiling cloth with a long piece of wood. The smell of elfroot permeated the small clinic as he sprinkled some oil into the boiling water. 

"What, don't you want me?" Anders teased, chin tucking against his chest. 

There was silence. 

Anders stopped, standing up straight. "You _don't_ want me." 

"Anders, no--" 

"Well, then what?"

"I just-- you have patients that need you." 

Anders scoffed. "That's never sufficient reason not to drag me up Sundermount, or down the Wounded Coast, or after every thruppence bandit in Hightown. Why's this any different?"

Hawke scowled. "I don't-- it's not, of course it's not, forget I mentioned it." 

"No, say it." Anders looked at him with a challenge in his eyes. "I want to hear it." 

"You're not as subtle as you think you are," Hawke said awkwardly. 

Anders groaned. "I am going to kill that Blighted elf. He told you, didn't he?"

"He was worried about you, Anders." 

"Sure he was," Anders muttered, poking the boiling cloth angrily. 

"I just-- I don't want you to hurt yourself. Not for me." 

Anders glared at him, his eyes flashing. "I know my limits. Just because you've just noticed that I'm _crippled_ , Hawke, doesn't mean I have. I've been living in this body for my entire life. I know my limits. The _Hero of Ferelden_ knew my Maker-damned limits. She took me into the Deep Roads anyways." 

Hawke bit his lip, the expression incongruous on his chiselled face. "I don't think you're weak--"  
"--Good. Because I'm not." Anders scowled. "Tell me, Hawke, what else do you have planned _for my own good_? Don't worry, I know the drill, you're hardly the first person to take away my choices for the sake of my safety. It's hardly a surprise." He had begun to pace, his gate rolling with each step, and he gestured with the sharp stick for emphasis. "What next, are you going to take away my books, too? Or, no, wait, I remember how this goes- you'll happily take my maps, my potions, my help, but only on your terms. Maybe after you get back from the Deep Roads you can lock me up in a cellar, that always seemed like the part that people found truly _gratifying_." 

"Anders, stop," Hawke said sharply. "I'm sorry, ok? I didn't mean-- I did this all wrong. I trust you: I trust you to have my back, to heal the injured, to freeze enemies. It's not that. Surely you know that it's not that." 

Anders stood silently. His eyes were wary. 

"I would be happy to have you with us," Hawke said slowly. "I think you'd be a great asset to the party. It's just-- I know you, Anders. I know you don't like the Deep Roads- you've said so often enough- and when Fenris told me about your-- condition, I assumed--" 

"--You assumed what?"

Hawke shrugged uneasily. "The people in Lothering with the alienage disease always had a hard time in Winter. I thought maybe it was the same with being underground, and that was why you didn't-- nevermind." 

Anders frowned, but his shoulders loosened. "And rather than ask me this myself, you thought you'd assume? Thought you'd come in here and inform me that my services were no longer needed? So I wouldn't be _uncomfortable_." Anders pinched the bridge of his nose, and muttered, "Oh, you beautiful, Maker-damned fool." 

Hawke raised an eyebrow questioningly. 

Anders shot him a look over his shoulder as he lifted the heavy iron pot away from the fire. "I'm uncomfortable all the time, Hawke. It doesn't seem to matter much what I do. I have able assistants here at the clinic who can hand out food and poultices while I am away. I have my staff to lean on if things get to be too much. And you're even more foolish than I thought if you think I'm giving you these maps without following. The Hero of Fereldan gave me those maps, and I intend to return them to her someday. When she comes back from Nevarra or Antiva or whatever beautiful sunny country she ran off to with that Crow of hers." 

Hawke frowned at that. "You can't think I'd steal them from you."

Anders stared at him with wide eyes. "Hawke, in the time I've known you I've seen you pickpocket a Qunari, loot a body for its torn trousers more times than I can count, and willingly search the corpses of revenants--- _revenants_ \-- in return for two coppers and a handful of shiny pebbles. I am under no illusions about what you will and will not steal." 

"Hey!," Hawke said indignantly. "I only steal from those who deserve it. Well, and the dead. But they don't really count!"

Anders rolled his eyes tolerantly. "Tell that to the Grand Cleric." 

Hawke blanched. "I'd rather not." 

Anders nodded. "Great, then I'm coming with you. You need these maps. I need to get the hell out of Darktown and a few days’ rest from being vomited and excreted on. Neither of us really _needs_ to go to the Deep Roads, but that's madness for you."

"I told you, I'm going to buy Mother's estate--" 

"--And that's very admirable of you, and I am coming along to make sure you don't die, which is quite admirable _of me_ , but the fact remains that only Wardens, dwarves, and the insane go into the Deep Roads willingly, and usually only those who are all three survive."

Hawke smirked. "And what does that make you?"

Anders smacked him on the shoulder. "An anomaly." 

"You're certainly that, Anders," Hawke said tolerantly. "You're certainly that."  
\-------------------------------------------------------------

It was not an unfamiliar conversation. Neria had been concerned at first, too, although for entirely different reasons. 

"You don't have to," she had said softly. The two of them were seated in the Warden-Commander's quarters, drinking strong tea spiked with Antivan brandy as they worked on a requisition list to send back to the Tower. "You can stay in the stillrooms, preparing-- we may not be large in numbers, but we're big enough to justify having a dedicated healer and herbalist." 

Anders had frowned. "Yes, you are. Which is why I'm coming with you."

"Velanna and I are mages, too." 

"Neither you nor Velanna could cast a healing spell if it was to save your life. Which it almost certainly would be." Anders had frowned, and put down his mug. "Neria, what is this really about?"

She had fidgeted uncertainly.

Anders had felt a flash of red-hot rage behind his eyes. "Neria Surana, you know as well as I do that I am just as capable as anyone else in the Blight-damned tower. I escaped four times, Neria. Once, I even managed to stay away for six months. Do you honestly think I am so weak?"  
"No," Neria said softly. "I think that not two months ago you were in a 6 by 6 cell with nothing but your own wit to guard you from all manner of evil. And I saw your face when we were in the basements, and again in the silverite mines."  
Anders looked at her. She had always been uncomfortably direct in matters like these. In the Tower, sanity was retained with honey-sweet butterfly lies— _I chose this, yes Ser, no Ser, this is fun for me too, Ser, no Enchanter, I wasn’t fidgeting, yes Knight Captain, I will follow you to your rooms_ \-- and Neria had never been good at them. Maybe it was why everyone loved her so much. 

Her dark eyes were serious and wide in her pointed brown face.  
"This is about Uldred, isn't it?"Anders asked warily. He did his best not to think of those days, of the screams, of the demons that had stalked the fade sensing weakness, of the chains and shackles and runes that had prevented him from doing anything but entering the fade and trying to guard the youngest apprentices by drawing the demons to himself instead. Of how when he was finally released, by a bruised and battered First Enchanter Irving searching for any forgotten abominations, it was to a tower population halved in size and floors still coated in sticky blood. 

Her face remained impassive, but her upper lip twitched. "I should have known they had you locked up. I shouldn't have assumed-- I shouldn't have assumed that you were already dead." 

Anders sighed, and took her hands in his. "You didn't know. I should have been out. Greagoir only gave me six months. I should have been out. I _would_ have been, but Greagoir was sent away to Val Royeaux around the same time you were-- I think the Chantry wanted all of the Knight-Commanders to come discuss the Blight-- and Kenton was temporarily elevated from Knight-Captain. He extended the sentence until such time as I would 'show an appropriate display of remorse.'" At the end of his sentence, his voice turned cold as he mimicked the sneer of the senior Templar. 

"Kenton always did hate you," Neria said quietly. 

Anders shrugged. "Yes, well, I expect he's dead now, anyway. I'm not sure how else they could have forgotten me until Irving did a final sweep of the tower to check for any abominations hiding in corners." 

Neria looked at him, her eyes sympathetic. 

"Neria, it's _fine_. I'm not a child anymore. You don't have to protect me." 

"I promised Karl--"

Anders stilled. "Don't. I don't-- it doesn't matter _what_ you promised Karl. I'm a grown man. You're my commander and you know that I'm capable. If I promise not to turn into a gibbering idiot the second the entrance doors are closed, will you consent to bringing me along?"

Neria was silent for a long moment. "You don't sleep." 

"Neither do you. Neither does Nathaniel. Oghren does, but in my professional opinion any time that dwarf loses consciousness it cannot in good conscience be called 'sleep' as much as it is 'passing out'." 

Neria grabbed him by the hand. "That's not the point." 

"Then what is?"

Neria bit her lip. "I helped Jowan escape, you know." 

Anders nodded. "I heard the stories." 

"And then he poisoned the Arl of Redcliffe." 

Anders raised his eyebrows, then nodded deeply. "Ah. So that was Jowan. That-- I have to be honest, that surprises me." 

He twisted his ring- a simple iron band with an anders phrase scratched into it that Karl had given him for his 18th nameday. "So-- he's dead. Or no, not dead, they'd have given him back to the Circle to deal with-- Tranquil?"

Neria looked down. "I let him go." 

Anders nodded, quietly. "He was your friend. I understand." 

"No, you don't." She set her own mug down on the table, and began to pace. "I _helped_ him escape. I destroyed his phylactery-- I was down in those Maker-cursed dungeons, and that's what I did. I destroyed the phylactery of someone who then tried to kill the closest thing one of my best friends had to a father. I was down there, and I knew-- Anders, I knew what they were doing to you, and instead of destroying your phylactery so you could get away for good, instead of freeing you from that cell, I helped Niall and his little Chantry sister girlfriend." 

Anders, who had gone paler during her speech, stood up shakily, crossing the room to where Neria was pacing by the hearth. "I don't blame you, Neria. I never did." His smile twisted on itself. "You and Karl both always thought you were in control of so many more things than you actually were. You were still an apprentice. Karl tried, I know he did, and he was an enchanter. Anything that's happened to me, the blame falls first onto me, and then onto the Templars. Not you, not Karl." 

He wrapped his arms around her carefully. Touch was complicated, in the Circle, but he and Neria had been inseparable as children. This would hardly be the first time she had gotten snot on his robes.

"Do you miss him?" She asked, her face still buried in his armpit. 

Anders winced, and tightened his hold. "I-- of course. I wrote him a few times, but-- I can't. He asked me how Niall was doing, and I just-- there are too many ghosts, Ner'. You know that. "

She gave a watery smile, then punched him in the shoulder. 

"Ow!" Anders withdrew his arms. "What was that for?"

"Making excuses," she told him sternly. "If I can't, then you can't." 

"I never said you couldn't make excuses," Anders said smoothly. "You're my Commander, that's hardly my place." Then he frowned. "How did you manage to let Jowan live? I'd have thought poisoning the King's uncle was a hanging sentence for sure." 

Neria smiled ruefully. "I'd already been to the tower, dealt with Uldred's-- thing. I couldn't-- he was the only one in our year who took longer to be harrowed than me. Everyone else had moved to the mage quarters long ago. And I thought-- everyone was _dead_ , Anders, and Karl was _gone_ , and I was so, so sure you were dead too that I never even checked. I was too scared, I knew that Wynne had asked for a survivor's list to be sent to her but I never dared look at it. I just-- I couldn't." 

"I understand," Anders said quietly. "I-- I thought the same of you, until gossip told me otherwise. Even then-- I think I went mad for awhile. Maybe I still am." 

Neria sighed, and pulled him down onto the couch with her. She pushed his hair out of his eyes and behind his ears, an almost maternal gesture. "You're not mad, Anders. A little banged-up, maybe, but not mad." 

He nodded, and rested his forehead against hers. "Neither are you, my Hero of Fereldan." 

She giggled. "Don't call me that, Anderfels." 

He winked. "Make me, oh Swoony Surana." 

She gave a scandalised gasp. "I thought you'd forgotten that!" 

"After you fell down that spiral staircase to the library because you were admiring Evelyn Amell's hair? My dear, I could _never_." 

She poked him, and they fell into a contented, sleepy silence. 

"Ner'?"

"Mmm?" At some point, she had closed her eyes, resting her head heavily on his shoulder. 

"I'm coming to the Deep Roads with you. Surely that's the whole point of being a Warden."  
She snuggled closer into his shoulder, and he took her silence as acquiescence.  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
**9:33 Dragon, 20th Haring**

Why did he keep insisting on being allowed into the Deep Roads, he thought grumpily, as he rolled over in his bedroll and tried to arrange his limbs in a position that didn't cause agonising pain.  
He hated the Deep Roads. Hated the dark and the cold and the constant skritch-skritch-skritch of Darkspawn on the edge of his consciousness, filling the air with the smell of rotten meat only he could taste. It was disgusting. They were disgusting. He had always deplored the tendencies of Wardens to _seek out_ the Darkspawn- in the Anderfels, they came to you, and they came fast, and before you knew it out of the shadows an entire village was destroyed. 

He couldn't sleep in the dark. Even on the surface, even in his clinic or in his room at Vigil’s Keep, if he could not light a lantern he would volunteer for nighttime patrols or watches. In his clinic, when it did not seem prudent to dose himself with embrium he would make house calls at all hours, travelling through shanties and lean-tos and huddled masses of people and infections to deliver babies and ease fevers. 

Sometimes he was too late, and he was not a necromancer. At those times he would say a prayer- commend the infant’s soul to the Maker’s side- and slip a street-child a sovereign to fetch a Chantry Sister. 

 

In the Deep Roads, he took second watch. First watch was taken early enough in the night that the fire still burned, the last remnants of the party drinking their ale slowly or singing soft drunken songs. By second watch, the fire was banked embers, and it was dark. 

He would sit in the dark, back to a stone wall, watching and listening for the telltale skritch-skritch-skritch of the ‘spawn. While he did so, he would roll up bandages, sprinkling the boiled cloth with elfroot oil to numb the pain and clot the blood when it was applied. 

That night, Hawke was on watch with him. The warrior’s bright eyes gleamed in the darkness, and he sat next to Anders and sharpened his axes. 

“What do the Darkspawn feel like?” Hawke asked. 

Anders shrugged, nonplussed. “It’s hard to explain. Like a—a sort of tugging, I guess. An itch. I can hear them, scratching away in my mind—but it’s the smell that’s the worst.” He frowned. “At least, I always assumed that was a Warden thing. Can you smell them?”

Hawke smiled. “I have smelled them, in the past—but not here. The Deep Roads just smell like the Deep Roads, as far as I can tell. Mould and mud and despair, but not—we ran into the Horde, you know. That’s how we lost Carver.” 

“I’m sorry,” Anders said honestly. “That must have been horrible.” 

“Yeah,” Hawke said distractedly. “Yeah, it wasn’t—wasn’t pleasant. I don’t advise the Blight as a destination for your next holiday.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

“The Horde, though—that smelled like rotting meat, and death. I’ve never smelled anything like it, and I never care to again.” He paused for a moment, and then, quietly, “—I still dream about it. That smell, I mean.” 

Anders nodded, sympathetically. “Believe me when I say that I do.” 

“I believe you.” 

They sit in companionable silence for a moment, listening to Varric’s soft snores and Isabella’s musical murmurs. 

“Anders.” 

“Mm?”

“Why did you leave the Wardens?”

Anders froze, his hands in mid-fold. “I—it’s a long story.”

“We’re in the _Deep Roads_.” 

“It’s also—not a very happy one. Or amusing. I do like to be amusing.” 

Hawke smiled. “Tell me about it when we’re out of here?”

“Buy me a drink first?”

“The finest Antivan brandy money can buy.” 

Anders smiled softly. “I’d like that.” 

Hawke nodded, looking at him carefully. “You worry me, you know.” 

Anders wrinkled his brow. “Why is that?”

He smiled. “You don’t even realise it, but you have a way about you—people follow you. The people in Darktown especially.” 

Anders shook his head. “The people of Darktown follow me because sometimes I seem like the only person in the world standing between them and certain death from the fevers.” 

His mind drifted for a moment, thinking of his clinic, wondering how it was going. A few days before he left a woman from the alienage had approached him about apprenticing her daughter- and when he had spoken with the girl, a stern, brown-haired thing of 15, it had become apparent that she was not just a girl with a knack for stitches, but a fully-fledged healing mage—and although he had not had enough time to put her through her paces such that he was comfortable with her practicing magic on her own, she was handy with a needle and poultice and perfectly capable of making the daily rounds of the refugee camps and lyrium dens with baskets of food and potions. 

“Anders,” Hawke’s voice sounded stern. 

“Hmm?”

“I was talking to you.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Anders blushed. “I was thinking about the clinic.” 

Hawke smirked, his eyes crinkling in genuine amusement. “I said, the people of Darktown would follow you to war.” 

Anders frowned, and considered this. “No,” he said at last. “No, I think you’ve got it backwards. I’d follow them into theirs.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late, I've been battling a sinus infection and feeling miserable. Also, the chapter count has been updated because I realised that this makes the most sense if it follows, more or less, the arc of the game, with two chapters per 'Act'. Look out for the second part of Act 2 (and some smut! finally, these two stop having feelings in each other's general directions and actually do something!) late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

**9:34 Dragon, 2nd Guardian**  
As it happened, they didn't die down there. 

Not as a result of anything Hawke did or didn't do, to be honest- while Anders was prepared to grant that his ingenuity and charm had gotten them relatively far, the whole 'not-spending-the-rest-of-their-natural-lives-underground' thing wasn't so much a result of any one of their personal charms as it was sheer cuss-headedness. 

Or maybe Divine intervention. Maker, Anders _hoped not_. 

At any rate, they survived, and when they came out into the light of day, eyes temporarily blinded after so many days of darkness-- it was all Anders could do to resist kissing the earth in joy. 

When they had been sealed in, Anders had been certain that they would die down there. When they had been sealed in, only to have a hunger demon offer them a deal-- well, that was when he had started feeling tense, the familiar urge to run knotting around his neck as he forced himself to breathe and fight, breathe and fight, breathe and fight. More than once, he noticed Varric watching him from the corner of his eye, with the kind of practiced sympathy that made him aware that he was completely failing to act normal. 

It was forever a frustration that, having abandoned both the material poverty of his childhood and the spiritual poverty of the circle, those two things seemed to haunt him at every turn whenever he did something that was _not normal_ , like tucking crusts of bread up the sleeves of his robes or sleeping with his back firmly against the wall in the smallest, tightest circle he could manage. 

They were always greeted with looks and questions, alternating suspicions and sympathies, and in the weeks of forced close company it had become apparent that living alone in Darktown had not done wonders for his eccentricities. Or for his tongue.

Hawke hadn't noticed. Hawke, in many ways, was rather like the Mabari that he favoured-- big-hearted and also _big_ , with powerful limbs that would be terrifying if they were ever turned against you but which were only sweet when they were curled up sleeping by the fire. He was a good man, a kind man, and a man completely lacking in tact or subtlety-- having seen the other man's clumsy interactions with Fenris, and having experienced them directed at himself, Anders was quite comfortable in saying that the man was good in a crisis or in a fight and utterly terrible at conveying a gentle emotional sentiment without faltering. These sentiments included such things as 'sorry for your loss' and 'gee, I bet you have some complex feelings over not being a slave any more' which in Hawke's case were expressed respectively as 'well, at least he died quick!' and 'you really shouldn't just brood alone, mother says it can't be good for you.' 

Anders tended to laugh at such things. They were just so quintessentially _Hawke_ , a constant, like the rain in Kirkwall, and whenever Hawke showed up with some clumsily-placed kindness Anders felt himself unfurling bit by bit like a leaf in the sunshine. 

It was all a bit terrifying, to be frank. Especially when Hawke was flirting with him. 

There was that, too. Hawke was flirting with him. Hawke flirted with everybody-- again, like a well-treated Mabari, free with his affections and touches because he had never had to learn how such things may burn you. It would be frustrating if it were not so pleasant. 

All of which was to say that it was not until they had left the Deep Roads that Anders was certain that Hawke had meant it. This was why Anders preferred cats- they were discerning, and so you always knew when they really liked you. 

They made it out of the Deep Roads, Hawke now a wealthy nobleman. A wealthy nobleman with a sister in the Gallows. A wealthy nobleman who showed up to Anders' clinic with a red, salt-stained face clutching a bottle of Starkhaven’s finest whiskey. 

Anders had hugged him when it became apparent that Hawke needed some kind of physical gesture of reassurance-- he wasn't good at those, but it was easier to hug than it was to make up sweet candy lies about the Circle. About the Gallows. 

"Will- will she be alright?" Hawke whispered brokenly. 

Anders bit back his initial response, which was to spit _"of course she won't!"_

Neria had always said that she would teach him the merits of an 'inside voice' one day. 

He paused, and took a steadying breath. "She may be. She's older- that may be in her favour. She will pass her Harrowing without issue, and there's no reason for them to delay it. In fact, they'll assume that as a life-long apostate she is more vulnerable to possession and so will Harrow her sooner. And once she's Harrowed- they can't make her Tranquil." 

Hawke snorted wetly. "They made your—Karl-- Tranquil." 

Anders bit his lip until he could feel the iron tang of blood upon his tongue. "Yes, they did." He exhaled sharply. "They shouldn't make her Tranquil. And she has a mother and a brother of noble standing in this city-- that will help. She isn't an elf, she isn't from another country-- well, she is, but you know what I mean-- and she speaks the language. She's clever and knows how to heal. If she's lucky, or if you bribe the right people, she should get placed in the infirmary or teaching the youngest apprentices. Those are the safer positions to be in." 

Hawke eyed him warily. "What are the more dangerous ones?"

Anders bit back a laugh. "All the others?” He paused. “My apologies that was unkind. I only meant-- those are relatively rare skills. If someone is good with young children, or is a gifted healer, they have value. There is a reason why they whipped me and hobbled me, but I never saw a noose or a brand. I was valuable. Bethany isn't a spirit healer, she's a force mage- but she is well-versed in creation magic, and that's a difficult school to learn. She will have value because of that. She's not going to be working in the library or in the athletics ground or in the kitchens. In the infirmary, she'll be in quite a bit of contact with Templars, but most of them will be unconscious or bleeding and unlikely to harm her. The Circles are cages, Hawke-- but for the right person, at the right time, they can be a gilded one." 

Hawke nodded slowly. "But not for you." 

Anders frowned. "This isn't about me." 

 

Hawke shook his head. "Bethany isn't you, but you know what the-- what the worst case scenario is. What is would be." 

Anders paused. "I know what the worst case scenario _was_ , several years ago, in Ferelden. I really don't even know what the worst case scenario would be there now-- things were changing after the Blight, but I left before I had the chance to be the subject of those changes. But five years ago, in Kinloch Hold-- if you were 'uncooperative' or a 'danger to yourself'- that was how they always phrased it, then-- then I do know what would happen, yes." 

"And that is...?" Hawke prompted. 

Anders swallowed dryly, and began absent-mindedly massaging his right knee. "I was 12 when I went to Kinloch. The worst age to be brought in, if you ask me-- any older and you've maybe got enough maturity to act in your own self-preservation, any younger and you're likely too confused to know what's going on. But at 11, 12, 13-- you're enough of a child to completely lack impulse control, and enough of an adult to know that you are losing something. So you fight, in whatever way you can, until they break you and you stop. The breaking is-- not pleasant." He bit his lip. "I don't know what you want me to say. None of this applies to Bethany." 

Hawke blinked at him, his eyes open and sad. "I know. I thought maybe it would help you to talk about it." 

Anders snorted. "It wouldn't, Hawke, but thank you. I-- I try very hard not to talk about it, actually." 

Hawke nodded slowly, and rested his large hand on Anders' shoulder. "You're a good friend, Anders." 

Anders smiled, and let his eyes fall shut, so he felt rather than saw the larger man move closer. "You're not so bad yourself, Hawke." 

Hawke moved even closer. "You're a good _man_." 

"Well, that's rather more debatable," Anders began, but the words were cut off as the other man pressed his mouth against his. 

Oh, they were kissing. That was nice. 

When he pulled away, Anders felt his heart beating erratically in his chest. He had missed that. He hadn't felt that, hadn't felt _safe_ like that with someone since-- well, since Karl. Anders tried to stop that train of thought before it began, because as far as he knew it was considered rather bad form to cry after kissing someone. 

He didn't quite manage it, and so his voice was husky when he said "You're the best man I know, Garrett.”

Hawke sighed and turned away, his tawny skin gleaming in the torchlight. “I wish I could help you.” 

“What?” Anders turned to try and make eye contact. “What on earth do you mean, Hawke? You do help me. It’s been a long time since someone helped me like you have.” 

“I know, I just—it seems like I should be doing more.” 

Anders bit his lip. He was not a kind man, or he would not be doing this, but he tried to be a good one. 

“Well, since you mention it, I think I have some people I want you to meet.”   
\--------------------------------------

**9:34 Dragon, 7th Drakonis**   
He was going to kill someone. 

He realized this quite calmly, a chill falling over his bones as he readied a fire spell. Ser Alrik was going to die. 

Everything seemed very quiet—even though Isabella was readying her daggers, Hawke raising his sword and shield, and Merrill had already readied her armor. There was shouting and screaming, and the girl was crying ugly, choking sobs as she covered her face in her hands. 

But everything had gone quiet as soon as he had heard what Alrik said. Distantly, somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that he should probably be angrier, more upset. He should be shaking. 

He was not. 

He threw fireball after fireball, didn’t realize that he was yelling until his throat started to hurt from the smoke and screams. 

Alrik hit him with a smite, and he felt the sickly, nauseous burn of his magic being drained away. 

No. Not again. Not again, not again, not again. He was never going to be weak again. 

There was a young girl to protect, and he was a healer, and he was going to rip that man limb from limb if that was what it took. 

He lunged forward, saw rather than felt Alrik’s booted foot come up to kick him in the knee, and as he fell forward he directed his momentum to take the other man down with him, knocking the sword out of his hand. 

He hit him. Again and again, and it will later occur to him that Alrik hadn’t been moving, hadn’t been responding as quickly as he should have. Merrill must have been draining stamina. Blood magic was a disgusting, cursed thing, but it had its advantages. A smite drained your mana, not your blood. 

He gouged at his face with his finger nails, and felt the pulpy scratch of flesh under his nails. He tried to stand up, tried to gain the advantage, and felt a sharp snap of pain before his legs collapsed under him again. 

“Anders,” he heard Merrill’s panicked voice as though through a fog. “Anders, Hawke needs help.” 

Anders blinked. 

“Anders, he’s dead. He’s dead, and Hawke needs your help.” 

Anders blinked again. Merrill was crouched over him, extending a hand down towards him, and a lyrium potion in tow. 

“Please, Anders. I can’t heal him, you know that.” 

Anders nodded, shakily, and swallowed the potion. He reached out to grasp her hand and pull himself up, felt the tackiness of the blood on his hands mix with the blood on hers. Without thinking, he healed her sliced palm. 

“Oh, thank you,” Merrill said, surprised. “But you really should see to Hawke.” 

“Right,” Anders said slowly. “Right.” 

He felt wrong, as though there was a veil between him and the world. His hands were shaking—maybe it was the lyrium, although he had never reacted like that before. He took a few shaky steps over to   
Hawke’s prone body, whose tabard was black with blood. 

Falling to his knees, he began to heal, pushing magic through his fingers and into the layers of muscle and fat, forcing the energy out of his own body and into the other. He pushed and pushed, until the other man blinked. 

“Anders?”

He felt Isabella’s hand on his shoulder. “He’s alright, sweet thing. You can stop now.” 

Anders blinked. He was covered in blood. His stomach roiled, and he looked around the space—now deathly quiet save the sobbing of the young girl in the corner. He took a step towards her, probing for injuries, and she flinched back, shrieking. 

He stopped, motionless. He had—he had torn him apart. With his hands. His bare hands. He had—

He was covered in blood. He began rubbing at the blood on his hands and his sleeves, trying to scrape off the sections that were drying on brown and sticky. It only seemed to make it worse. 

He wanted to jump out of his skin. He wanted to scream. He wanted to _leave_. 

“Are you okay, Anders?” Merril asked innocently. “You’re looking very pale.” 

Anders shook his head. “I—I need to go. I need to go. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I need to go. This isn’t what I want to—I need to go. I’m sorry.” 

“Anders, wait—“ 

But he was pushing himself along with his staff, his steps shaky but quick as he fled the scene. 

He must have looked a sight, because when he entered the clinic several of the waiting patients unsuccessfully suppressed gasps of shock. He ignored them, pacing frantically to the back of the room and pulling the curtain across that separated his personal cot and chamber pot from the rest of the clinic. 

He couldn’t—he wasn’t supposed to act like this. Wasn’t supposed to forget himself. He had to stay in control, he had to control this, he couldn’t panic like that, couldn’t lose himself to feeling or emotion- he had to be better, he had always had to be better, he couldn’t _trust himself like this_. 

He sank down against the wall and began pulling at his robes, balling up the thin cloth between his fists until he was sat in just his smalls, the blood having soaked into even his thin cotton shirt and pants. 

He was shaking. He needed to leave. If he couldn’t—if he couldn’t be relied upon even this much, then he would have to leave. Maybe—maybe he’d go to Antiva, see if Neria needed help. Maybe he’d throw himself on the mercy of the First Warden at Hossberg. Maybe—  
With a frustrated cry, he threw his staff across the room. He wasn’t allowed to be like this.   
\--------------------------------------  
The only thing hurt as his pride. Well, that wasn't quite true, but what actual, flesh parts of him had been hurt had been easily mended, and in reality it was the experience of being flat on his back in mud and shit that would stay with him from the whole event. 

Neria was furious. Mostly at him, to be honest. 

"You need to tell me if you can't do something." She hissed at him when he had washed and re-dressed and presented himself in her office for a formal dressing-down. "I can't protect you if you don't _talk to me_!" 

"What was I supposed to say, Neri? That I haven't slept, so please and thank you, if we could just avoid the Darkspawn today that would be ever so lovely, thank you for asking? What kind of Grey Warden would that make me?"

"One who recognizes that a team has strengths and weaknesses, and that there's no reason for him to hide pertinent information from me? One who trusts the wisdom of his commander enough not to assume that she isn't going to turf him out at the first sign of weakness? Maker's _balls_ , Anders, what kind of person do you think I am?"

Anders frowned, his eyes downcast onto the intricately patterned rag rug that had been sent from Neria's quarters at the tower. She had spent months on it, carefully braiding bits of colourful cloth together in the apprentice dorms as the others read aloud or sang during the long winter nights. 

"Anders," she said softly, her voice like velvet-covered steel. "Ironically, because you didn't talk to me, I'm not sure if I can trust you now. Which is probably exactly the opposite of what you were trying to do with that hare-brained scheme of yours. So what is it? Talk to me, or I really will send you to the stillrooms and keep you there." 

Anders sighed, but made no reply. 

"Oh, look at me, you fool," Neria said exasperatedly. 

Anders lifted his head, and saw not anger but exhaustion. "I'm sorry." 

"Good. You should be. Now sit down and talk to me." 

Anders took the chair on the other side of her polished cherry desk, and wrapped his knuckles around the stiff fabric on the arms. "I-- I wasn't thinking." 

"Mmm?"

"Possibly I-- haven't been doing that a lot lately." 

"Mmm. Yes, I I have _met_ you, Anders." 

"Well, then." He fidgeted awkwardly. "I'm not sure what you want me to say." 

"Maybe the truth? What even happened? I was on the other side of the bushes, I couldn’t see anything." 

"I was talking with Nathaniel," Anders began. 

"Oh, well then. Say no more." At Anders' questioning look, she rolled her eyes. "I'm obviously joking, Anders, that doesn't tell me anything at all." 

"He-- said something. I can't even remember what it was, to be honest. But it-- I don't know. Whatever he said, just made me-- everything kind of went grey, to be honest." 

She frowned, rubbing at her chin with a calloused hand. "And then you were at the bottom of the hill?"

"No?" Anders said questioningly. "Then I said something, probably something stupid, to be honest, and then _he_ said something and I was just-- it made me _angry_ , it was exactly like something-- anyway. It doesn't matter." 

"I disagree," Neria said softly. "If there's a problem between two of my Wardens, if they can't be trusted to have each other’s backs- well, that matters a great deal, I should think." 

Anders shook his head. "It's not a problem. I overreacted. I do that sometimes." 

"Yes, you do," Neria said neutrally. "So do I, in fairness. I always blame it on that whole 'being locked up in a tower as a child' thing. Alistair always seemed to buy that." 

"Yeah," Anders said hollowly. "It-- I made some joke, some stupid joke, about bravery and honour and how _Orlesian_ the whole, uh, Howe thing was." 

"Oh, Anders," Neria said in a disappointed tone. "You never have learned not to bite the hand that feeds you, have you?"

"If I didn't, how would I know when the hand will stop?" he asked in a wry tone. "I like to know my limits." 

"Except you don't know them at all, it seems," she said dryly. "Go on." 

"I wasn't lying when I said that I wasn't entirely sure of what happened next. Then he said something, then I said something, and then he-- he called me a cripple, which, fair enough, that's what I am, although I've always thought I did rather well it, to be honest-- but it was-- do you remember what Ser Antony used to say?"

Neria looked at him, her eyes widening slightly in the dim lamplight. "That clearly crippling mages wasn't sufficient, judging by your behaviour? Yes, I've recalled it once or twice in my nightmares." 

"Well." Anders said shortly, rubbing at his knee distractedly. "That wasn't what he said, exactly, it was something more like-- more like what good was a mage if they couldn't even protect themselves, which I clearly couldn't.   
Can't. And I kind of-- it was just-- I don't know. It made me angry, I guess. I know I got a good punch in before he threw me down the hill." 

Neria snorted. "I guess I should be glad that you didn't set him on fire, if that's what he said." 

"See!" Anders said, forcing a grin. "You always did know how to look at things." 

"You're not getting off that easily, Anders. I know you knew that what you said would set him off- you were raised in a tower, not a barn." 

"I was raised in both, actually." 

"Not the damned point, Anders." Neria sighed, and pushed herself up from her desk chair to pace by the hearth. "You're not _in_ a tower anymore. Or a barn. I know it's strange, but--" 

"--You don't know," Anders said lowly, feeling a sudden spark of rage. "Neria, I love you like a sister, but you have _no_ idea-- I spent over a year in a six by six cell. There were-- there were demons, and they killed my _cat_ , and for the Maker's sake I've spent my life hoping for some kind of revolution and then I wasn't even there to make sure it wasn't run by a madman with a demon fetish! Do you think the Templars got _nicer_ after they were beset by demons? I'm not pretending that you had any fabulous time of it, roaming the countryside, but you _weren't there_." 

"Is that what this is about?" Neria said wonderingly. "Anders, is that what this is? Do you think I don't understand? Anders, I still bathe in my smalls because I don't entirely believe that there isn't a Templar looking through the grates for a taste of that knife-eared bitch. I was there too, Anders. I made different choices because I _wasn't as brave as you_ , not in the same way. And then I do one brave thing, and it gets people killed. I do one brave thing, and I completely fail to save the people I cared- _care_ about. I have spent my life trying to make people happy. Since I was 13 summers, I've been trying to make _you_ happy. Would it have been better if I didn't recruit you, Anders? Your phylactery was still out there, but I _told_ you to run, said that I would tell them you were dead-- and you stayed anyway. If I'd let the Templars take you back, do you think you would have survived? There'd have been an accident-- a flogging, a lesson gone wrong, and then it would be 'oh, our spirit healers are all gone or incapacitated, I guess we'll just leave him to die of poisoned blood in a Maker-damned cell! Is that what you wanted?" She was yelling, by the end, and Anders felt his eyes burning. 

"No," he said quietly. "That's not-- I know what you did, Neria. That was unkind, what I said before. I _am_ grateful." 

"If that's not what it is, then what is it?"

"I'm just tired, Neri'. That's all." 

She frowned at him. "That's not an answer." 

"That's all I have," he said softly. "I don't-- do you think I want to be like this? I just-- I just haven't been sleeping." 

"Cast a sleep spell on yourself," she said, matching his tone. 

"I don't-- I need to sleep for more than an hour at a time, that's all. So do you, for that matter. Do you think I haven't noticed you checking on me? On all of us?"

She shrugged. The firelight blurred her face slightly, hiding the wrinkles and scars that marked the passage of time. For a moment, she might have been that girl again, blinking owlishly up at him beneath heavy braids of dark hair, grey eyes wide in her tawny face. 

"I just-- you know how it is." 

He nodded. "I _do_ , and I know you know that I do. It-- I thought destroying my phylactery would help, but it was a trap, right? Who knows where my phylactery is-- probably still in a warehouse in Denerim with the others, where they got sent after the Blight. But even-- I don't think that would even help. If shooting fire at Templars didn't help, why would that? They can't take us back now, anyway." 

Neria gave him a half smile. "I don't think you really believe that." 

"My darling Surana, my entire life has been an exercise in convincing myself of things I don't really believe."   
\-----  
 **9:34 Dragon, 7th Drakonis**

His eyes burned with tears as he sorted through his sparse possessions with shaking hands. Chaya, the elvhen girl who was definitely-not-a-healing-mage, had taken one look at him and had quickly triaged the remaining patients, until the only remaining patient was an elderly Kirkwaller who, if the sounds of his lungs were anything to go by, had only hours to live. There was only so much magic could do, and lifetime of hard labour and white liquor had served him well enough until a cut in his foot got poisoned in the sewers of Darktown, and he had refused to go to a healer until there was nothing to be done for the leg. He and Chaya had amputated it, the day before-- a grizzly affair, but the poison had clearly spread to his blood stream and the fever had never broken. He had no family, nobody to watch him as he died, and even as he swore and planned his escape Anders swore to himself that he would wait until the man died and he had commended his soul to the Maker before he fled. 

He couldn't leave, but he had to. It was as simple as that-- Chaya would help, she would save as many people as she could and in time everyone would forget the Darktown healer with the Anders nose and the Fereldan accent. He would take the sins of those he couldn't save onto his soul as he always did, and he would move on. 

Strange. He had almost been happy, here. When he was around Hawke, he didn't want to run. 

But he had no choice. He couldn't trust himself, clearly. Couldn't trust himself not to overreact, not to lose his Maker-damned _mind_ , not to white-out and return with a dead man's flesh beneath his fingers and a crying child in the corner. What was he supposed to do? 

"Well, what's all this?" 

Anders looked up at the familiar baritone, made a symbolic attempt at wiping the blood and tears from his face. "I'm-- I'm sorry, Hawke. I should have-- I'm going to go, as soon as I sort through all this." 

Hawke took a step closer, lowering his voice when he saw the sleeping man on the cot nearest the lantern. "What's all this about leaving? And what's his story?"

Anders sighed, letting his head slump forward. "He-- I have to watch him. There's nothing to heal, really. I just don't want to let him die alone. Nobody should do that, if they don't have to." 

His eyes clouded over, thinking of the long night he spent in the Fade, trying to lure the demons towards him and away from the younger and more vulnerable apprentices. He had been successful, to an extent-- between him and Wynne and the others, fewer children had died that night than would have otherwise. Still, there had been too many. 

"Anders," Hawke said softly, crouching down so his hazel eyes were level with his own. "Why are you leaving?"

"I lost control," Anders said simply. "I didn't-- I wanted to kill him, but not like that." 

Hawke nodded slowly. "He deserved to die."

Anders exhaled. "Yes. He did." 

"And you saved me." 

Anders was silent. 

"And that little girl is safe. I sent her on her way. With any luck, she's on a boat headed for Ferelden. Even if she does end up in Kinloch- and she shouldn't, she's a smart girl, and we managed on our own for _ages_ \-- it will be better than the Gallows. Better than Ser Alrik." 

Anders blinked. That was-- better than he had expected. The girl had been terrified, wouldn't let her near her, he had been scared that she was wounded, that he had been too late, and-- part of him had feared, even knowing Hawke's hatred of the Circles, that she would be sent back to throw herself on the Templars' mercy. 

"As far as I can tell, everything's turned out as well as it could be expected. A bad man is dead, and a young girl is free. So why do you need to leave?"

Anders scowled. "You're being-- obtuse, Hawke. I would have _ripped him apart_. His skin is still under my fingernails!" 

Hawke wrinkled his forehead. "Eww. Why haven't you washed?"

Anders groaned and threw his head back against the packed dirt wall, feeling a satisfying hollow thump that momentarily blocked out all thought. "I- it wasn't on purpose, Hawke. I wasn't thinking. I would have-- if anyone had gotten between me and him, I think I would have assumed that they were trying to help him and killed them too. I could have killed her. I could have killed you." 

"No, you couldn't have," Hawke said calmly. "I trust you, Anders." 

"You shouldn't!"

He shrugged, raising his big arms theatrically. "Well, I never have been much good at doing what I _should_. Comes of being raised by an apostate, I suppose."  
He lowered his voice, as though he were speaking to a wounded animal. "I trust you, Anders. More than you trust yourself, apparently. Now why don't you get cleaned up, and come back to the mansion for tea? Mother's made a jam tart." 

"I can't," Anders said in a low voice, as though he were speaking through a mouthful of cotton wadding. "I need to-- stay with him." 

Hawke nodded, slowly. "Does he have long?"

Anders shook his head. "Hours, maybe. I'm just keeping him comfortable." 

Hawke nodded again. "Well then. How's about-- you go to the mansion and take advantage of that fabulous Dwarven plumbing and get good and clean. I'll stay here and keep this good man comfortable. When you're done, come back, and if he's not gone-- then I'll stay with you for a while. Break some bread, drink some ale, and share some stories?"

Anders frowned and bit his lip, but try as he might, he couldn't find the flaw in the plan. He turned to push himself up from the floor, wincing in pain as he heard his joints crack audibly. 

"Let me help," Hawke said quietly, offering his forearm for Anders to grip. When he was standing, Hawke put his hands firmly on the other man's shoulders.

"I... I care for you a great deal, Anders," he said softly. "And I would hope that-- if you should run, if you truly thought that you had no other option-- that you would at least let me know, first. So that I could try and help." 

Anders was silent. He couldn't promise that. 

"I'm happier with you in my life, Anders." He smirked. "You and Fenris- you're my conscience." 

Anders blanched. "You must have a very confused conscience." 

Hawke smiled, and traced a tear track with his thumb. "I don't, actually. If only my conscience could see that." 

Anders smiled softly. He was so tired, he could hardly stand. "Hawke..."

"Go, Anders," he urged with a smile. "I'll tell this gentleman some tall tales while we wait." 

As Anders gathered up his things and limped out of the clinic, he smiled as he heard the beginning of "the goose-girl and the Darkspawn" in a light baritone. 

He took back his earlier assessment. Sometimes, Hawke seemed to know just what to say. 

He supposed he could stay, for a while.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is late, you guys! I had to attend a conference in another city, and that got very very sick as I always do. Eagle-eyed readers will also note that this doesn't _quite_ end at the end of Act II, but it made more narrative sense to end it there and if I had included the rest of it in this chapter this chapter would have been 10,000 words long.

**9:34 Dragon 8th Drakonis, the Wee Hours of the Morning**

It took hours for the man to die. When Anders returned, Hawke was, against all odds, still sitting next to the cot, leafing through a copy of Swords and Shields that Varric had dropped off to be read to the ill.   
He looked up and smiled when Anders walked in, his damp hair hanging loose around his ears. 

"Did you find my plumbing to your satisfaction? When we moved in, Mother practically had to drag me out for meals." 

Anders smiled. "Of course I did, Hawke, I'm hardly going to complain about a warm bath, now am I?"

"You never know- you might be living in Darktown because you like the smell. I try not to judge." His smirk crinkled the edges of his eyes, and Anders felt himself blush.   
How long does this poor bugger have, then?"

With a flick of his wrist, Anders sent out a wisp to check him over. "Not long. His breathing's slowing down. Minutes, not hours."

Hawke nodded somberly. "Is there nobody we should be fetching, then?"

Anders shook his head. "One of my assistants ran across him in the street on her way down from the Alienage. That's often the way of it-- if they're this bad off before they get to me, it's like as not that they have no family to speak of. I just keep them comfortable until the end, and try and give them a pyre. " 

Hawke frowned. "That seems like something the Chantry should do." 

Anders snorted. "It does, doesn't it? They will-- if the dead attended services, if he has family to ask for him, if he was known to them. Most of the guys like him haven't been in a Chantry since they were christened, and without a family... a pauper's grave, maybe, but not a pyre." He shrugged. "One of the first things Senior Enchanter Wynne taught me was the prayer to commend the souls of the departed to the Maker's side. A bit morbid, perhaps, but I've used it more than anything else, even with the magic. Some things are beyond healing." 

He sighed, and sat on a rickety stool, which he drew up so that he was level with Hawke. He stared at the dying man. "It's not right, but there are some things even magic can't fix." 

"Like your legs," Hawke said quietly. 

Anders exhaled sharply. "Like my legs, or his blood, or half the stillborn babies and dying mothers of Darktown. They need food and rest and sunlight, not more than that, but those are the few things that magic can't provide for them. I try and send as many as I can off with food parcels, but it's never enough." 

It was exhausting. Living in Darktown, working with these people—something was wrong, so very wrong, and Kirkwall was a tinderbox about to ignite. He could feel it in his aching bones. 

Hawke nodded, his eyes trained on the man's shallow breaths. "What do you do for them, then?"

Anders shrugged. "Make them comfortable. If it's a baby, I pray, and then I send someone to fetch a Chantry Sister for a baptism." He stretched, and the popping of his joints was almost deafening in the quiet clinic. 

They sat in silence for a while, until the man shifted, a soft groan forcing its way out between his lips. Anders sighed and cast something, his hand glowing briefly green with healing magic. “It’s not long now.” 

He bowed his head and began a litany. “Draw your last breath, my friends,  
Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky.  
Rest at the Maker's right hand,  
And be Forgiven.” As his words died off, his lips tightened. “He’s gone.” 

“And now?” Hawke asked, his voice hushed. The air in the clinic was heavy, and Anders wondered, as he always did, if the distinctive feel of _death_ was a mortal affectation or the result of Fade spirits circling in preparation for the shepherding across the Veil. 

Anders smiled sadly. “Now, we burn him.” 

They carried the body out onto the streets of Darktown, back by the sewage entrance, where the people of Darktown burned their dead, onto the dust and dirt and ash and bits of indeterminate bone that Anders always tried not to observe too closely. 

With a wave of his hand, Anders let flames lick up the dead man’s body. As he did so, he heard shuffling from behind him, as beggars and squatters emerged from their shelters to watch solemnly as the flames absorbed what was left of the man. 

Hawke touched his elbow gently, and he nearly started at the contact. “Come back to the mansion, Anders. I hate the thought of you being alone down here—you’ve had a hard day. Things will be better in the morning.” 

Anders sighed. “It always seems like it should be, but it so rarely is.” His tone was wry, touched by bitterness but low out of respect for the dead. 

As the smoke billowed into the damp night, the smell of burning flesh mixing with the noxious gases of Darktown to create a terrible biological ragout, he felt himself slump. “What am I doing here, Hawke?”

Hawke was silent for a moment. “Helping, surely.” 

Anders rubbed at his eyes. “I’m not so sure about that, sometimes.” 

The magical flames flickered and faded as the pyre burned low, the smoke coming thicker as it did so. 

“Come back to the mansion, Anders,” Hawke repeated. “We can have a drink. A celebration.” 

Anders frowned. “What are we celebrating?” He was numb, wrung out after a day of burning too hot and bright by half. He hadn’t run. He should have run. Kirkwall would be the death of him someday, but then he was never supposed to live as long as he had. 

Hawke smiled, and his calloused brown hand came up to gently touch Anders’ cheek. “The arrival of a young girl in Ferelden, of course.”   
\---  
They made their way up to Hightown, Anders leaning heavily on his staff and studiously ignoring Hawke’s repeated offers of help. Despite the many steps—and someday Anders was going to devise some kind of shapeshifting spell, something with _wings_ , if only avoid these bloody Maker-forsaken _stairs_ \-- he felt a sense of relief as the cool night air blew across his face. Spring was coming soon, and you could feel it in the frosty air.   
“Hightown _smells_ so much better than Darktown,” he said conversationally. 

Hawke snorted. “It ought to—it’s full of fancy Lords and Ladies. Besides which, _it’s not actually a sewer_.” 

“That’s probably a fair point,” Anders said after a minute. “I suppose in Hightown nothing ever explodes because of an errant spark catching the gas.” 

Hawke shook his head in mock wonder. “No, I don’t imagine it does.” 

He frowned, pursing his lips as they slowly made their way past the awnings of the closed-up shops and stands of the market. “Does the smell make them sick? The refugees, I mean.” 

Anders, who was focusing on not falling over, shrugged half-heartedly. “Sometimes, I guess. The Chantry says that most illnesses are caused by bad air, but I can’t imagine that’s true. It’s the kind of nonsense you come up with to explain disease when you don’t have a healer around because you’ve _locked them all in a tower_.” 

He paused next to a booth, leaning heavily against its side. “Some are, I guess. The chokedamp seems to be. Some of the fevers seem like they pass through the air, but it’s more likely that the diseased person’s piss and shit has gotten into the others’ food and lungs. But that’s hard to avoid, when you live in a sewer.” 

Hawke nodded, watching him closely. “Are you alright?”

“Just… give me a second.” He grit his teeth. “I don’t—I would cast on it, but I’m almost completely out of mana, and knowing our luck we’ll be beset by mercenaries at any moment.” 

Hawke nodded in understanding. “I keep clearing them out, and they keep coming back. Most dedicated Maker-damned mercs I ever met. I wasn’t half so dutiful when I was in the Red Irons.” 

Anders cast him a wry look as he began to move, slowly, towards the Hawke residence. “Were you a bad mercenary, Hawke?”

“Terrible! I let people go because I felt sorry for them, I was constantly tearing my uniform, and I’ve honestly never been that good at intimidation. You’d think it would come naturally to a man my size.” 

Anders snorted. “It’s your mouth—It’s far too kind. If you’d just shut it, you’d probably manage just find.” 

“My mouth, eh? Think a lot about my mouth, do you?”

“Yes,” Anders said, layering his tone with desire. “Often.” 

Hawke started, his eyes growing wide. “I didn’t… I was worried it was just me.” 

“How on earth could it have been just you, Hawke? I followed you into the bloody Deep Roads!” 

Hawke shrugged. “I don’t know—maybe you felt obligated to. You _were_ worried about me stealing the maps, I remember that much.” 

“I was—and am—slightly worried about you stealing anything that isn’t nailed down. It’s a bit of a problem, really.” 

“Varric doesn’t mind.” 

“Varric enables you, he doesn’t count. I bet Aveline minds.” 

Hawke rolled his eyes. “I love Aveline like a sister, and she loves me like a brother. As someone who has--- _had_ a brother, I can tell you that that means that she minds everything I do on principle.” 

They reached the threshold of the Hawke Estate. Anders shrugged uncomfortably, running his thumb rhythmically over the handle of his staff. “Is your mother home?”

“What, didn’t you see her when you took advantage of my plumbing earlier?”

Anders shrugged, again. “I might have washed at the pump instead. Because I might have been—hypothetically—worried about frightening either your very lovely mother or your slightly less lovely but still excellent dwarves.” 

Hawke groaned, rubbing his temples with his index fingers. “You are the most stubborn man this side of Orzammarr, Anders.”

“I’ve been reliably informed that it’s part of my charm.” 

“Well, they lied, so maybe strike the ‘reliable’ part from that sentence. And yes, my mother is home, but at this time of night she’ll be sound asleep. She sleeps like the dead, and the walls in here are Dwarven made. You would have to be riding a Bronco sidesaddle before anyone heard anything from across the hall.” 

Anders raised an eyebrow, attempting to show just how ludicrous that train of thought obviously was. His amusement over the idea of riding a Bronco sidesaddle won over, however, and he stifled his chuckles in the sleeve of his coat.

“I’d offer you a grand tour, but it would disturb the Dwarves,” Hawke said in a conversational tone. “My room’s up more stairs, I’m afraid, we can stay down here if you like—“

“—I’m fine,” Anders said stubbornly, ignoring the hot and sharp buzzes of pain that echoed through his bones with every step. 

He eyed the staircase with a wary eye. “Actually—“ 

“—Yes?” Hawke said eagerly. If he was a cat, his ears would have twitched with anticipation. 

“Maybe I could use a hand. Just your hand, mind you, don’t get any ideas.” 

Hawke nodded, and offered his forearm extended perpendicular from his body. Anders grabbed on to it with his empty hand, and they slowly made their way up the stairs. 

Hawke’s bedroom was very nice. Lavishly appointed in deep burgundies and golds, with a large Orlesian bed in the centre. A fire burned in the hearth, and Hawke led him to a chair that was right by the fire. 

It was a plush velvet, high-backed thing, and Anders felt a sudden overwhelming gratitude that he had bathed before arriving. The cost of this chair would have fed most of Darktown for a week. 

Hawke bustled in and out of the room, fetching wine and bread and cheese, before standing in the doorway, twitching with nervous energy. 

“Sit down, Garret, you’re making me tired.” Anders said softly. 

Hawke wrung his hands once, and then did so. “Are you _sure_ you don’t want a sandwich?”

“Pretty sure, yes, Hawke. It’s four in the bloody morning.” 

Hawke smiled, then shrugged, then attempted to do both at the same time, causing a grimace and an audible crunch from his neck. 

“Sit down before you fall down,” Anders said absently, as he began to pour the wine. “That’s what Neria always said to me. It’s nice to find out that that’s not advice that is unique to those with my… affliction.” 

Hawke snorted, and sat. His broad shoulders brushed either side of the other chair’s wings, and if that was comically mismatched it was nothing for the tiny sherry glass he held in his broad, brown hands. 

An awkward silence descended upon them. Anders swallowed a gulp of the sweet wine, and smiled brightly. “So! How’s the Arishok?”

Hawke rolled his eyes. “Distressingly big, as always. I don’t like being in a room with a man I’m not sure I could fight, let alone twenty of them.” 

Anders laughed. “Welcome to my world, Hawke.” 

Garrett eyed him suspiciously. “You’re a _mage_ , how often can you possibly be in a room with an enemy that you can’t defeat?”

Anders’ grip tightened on the sherry glass. “Oh, hardly ever,” he said, false-bright. “Just Templars, and Darkspawn Emissaries, and Demons, and anyone rich enough to lace a blade with magebane.”   
Hawke frowned. “I’ve seen you defeat all of those things. Most of them at least twice.” 

Anders rolled his eyes. “Yes, sure, but it was never _certain_. I always got lucky.”

The bigger man snorted. “Anders, blast it, what do you think I’ve been doing this whole time? Someday I’m going to get _unlucky_ , and knowing my luck it will be some tiny Dwarven rogue on their first day collecting for the Carta rather than a dragon or a bronco or anything else someone of my stature deserves.” The last was said with a sardonic twist to his mouth, before growing serious again. “We’ve both seen enough death to know that who lives and who dies isn’t always up to us. There’s skill and strength and an awful lot of luck besides.” 

Anders nodded, leaning forward to refill his sherry. “A more religious man than you might say that it was in the hands of the Maker, I suppose.” 

Hawke frowned, and nodded. “I imagine he would. Would that more religious man be you?”

Anders shrugged, and took another sip of wine. “In my experience—the people I have known, the suffering I have seen—I find it much easier to believe that the Maker turned His back on the world than that all we have to do is spread the Chant before He’ll return. It seems to me that if—if the Maker was disgusted by what we had done with His gifts, it would take a lot more than that to satisfy Him again.” He drained his glass. “Of course, they were going to send me to the Chantry, once upon a time.” 

Hawke raised an eyebrow wryly. “Anders. You grew up in a tower. They _did_ send you to the Chantry.” 

Anders snorted into his now-empty glass. “Properly, I mean. Not in chains, but as a brother. Although some of the kids I knew at the Chantry orphanage would probably have said that it’s much the same thing.” 

“You grew up in an orphanage?” Hawke’s eyes were wide. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—“ 

“—I didn’t grow up in an orphanage,” Anders interrupted, his eyes on the bottle of wine as he poured it into his glass. He was feeling comfortably warm, now, and the chair was soft and Hawke was soft and—he blinked, and finished his sentence. “My mother used to send me to the Chantry during the day while she worked the fields.”

Hawke nodded, his words careful. “And… your father?”

Anders shrugged. “I never knew my father. Nobody did. Mamma turned up in the village in the middle of winter, already pregnant with me, her feet bloodied and half-frozen. She’d have died, probably, but a farmer took her into his barns in return for her labour. She was a good spinner, she made some of the finest wool west of Hossberg.” Pride suffused his voice. “She—truth be told, I’ve always wondered if she was a mage.”

Hawke raised a bushy eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

Ander hummed thoughtfully. “Just a feeling. It’s rare that it just turns up without some family history, and Mamma never spoke about her family. I suppose it’s possible that she was an Orth and raised by her clan, or that she was an orphan herself, but sometimes she would say things… It doesn’t matter. She died, and when I didn’t have her to protect me, well. There wasn’t any room on the farm for someone who couldn’t work the fields. He’d have turned me out into the streets if I hadn’t set his barn on fire.” 

“Anders!” 

“What?” Anders looked up from his glass to see Hawke’s shocked face. “Not on purpose, Hawke! There was a Genlock! He ought to have been grateful…” 

“Grateful that you killed his sheep?”

“Grateful that the whole farm wasn’t torched by Darkspawn! Anyway, he called the Templars, I was dragged to another country where I didn’t speak the language, what’s done is done and all.” 

He drained his glass. “Well, that’s my sorry tale, now let’s hear some of yours?”

Hawke raised his eyebrow. “Some of mine? I haven’t got very many sorry tales, I’m afraid.” 

Anders scowled at him. “C’mon, Hawke. Growing up with an apostate father and a noble lady mother? Constantly on the run, having to hide? Surely there’s a story in that.” 

Hawke frowned, but re-filled his glass, and began an outrageous yarn that Anders would have to corroborate with Bethany if he ever had the chance, because there was no _way_ that thing with the Wyvern was true. He let his eyes slip closed, and basked in the warmth of the fire and of Hawke’s voice until he felt a hand shaking his shoulder. 

“Anders? C’mon, it’s time for good little apostates to be in bed.” 

Anders grumbled and tried to bury his face in the wingback chair. “D’n wanna go to bed. Wanted to ravish you.” 

The interlocutor seemed startled by that. “Well, that’s very good of you, but at this point I think you’d have a hard time keeping your eyes open long enough to get my smalls off, let alone do any ravishing.” 

Anders grumbled but didn’t disagree. 

“Come on, time for bed.” 

He groaned. “D’n wanna walk to Darktown.” 

“What? No, oh, you Blighted man, my bed, how on earth did you ever make all the good little boys and girls of the Circle blush if you lack even that awareness?”

“Di’nt sleep ‘round them.” 

“Oh.” The voice sounded startled. Then, with a hint of amusement, “So, it’s only when you sleep that you turn into Carver after mother forbade him from having anymore sweetcakes? I’ll remember that. Now, c’mon, bed.” 

The voice—which was attached to a body, and when he opened his eyes he saw that it was a very nice body indeed, Hawke having removed the ridiculous red robe he wore around the house standing bare-chested in a pair of tight leggings. 

Anders blinked, sleepily. “Hawke?”

“Who else would it be, in my bedroom, dragging you into my bed?”

Anders shrugged, and pushed himself up from his chair. He limped heavily towards the bed, Hawke hovering awkwardly beside him like the world’s most nervous parent watching their toddler use stairs for the first time. “M’fine.” He glared at him. “Just stiff.” 

“Are you sure, it’s quite a high bed…. No, nope, shutting up now, you didn’t hear that, go to sleep.” 

Anders attempted to glare at him balefully, before his expression turned to one of incredulous pleasure as he sat down on the feather mattress. He groaned. “This bed… Andraste’s _knickerweasels_ , this bed should be banned.” 

“It’s Orlesian,” Hawke said as he banked the fire, giving Anders a good look at the muscles of his broad brown back. 

“Maker bless the hedonistic fools,” Anders murmured as he snuggled down between the heavy blankets and the feathertick. He frowned and swatted absently at the other side of the bed. “Get in here, if I’m not going to ravish you I at least want you near me.” 

“You’re very tired, and more than a little drunk,” Hawke observed dryly. “Nevertheless, your wish is my command.” 

He slid into bed, and Anders’ last waking feeling was of the heavy weight of the other man’s arm across his back.   
\--------------------------------------------------------------  
 **9:34 Dragon, 12th Bloomingtide**

In later life, thinking of that day, Anders will remember the birds singing. Despite all the blood and horror and screaming and tragedy, he had awoken that morning to a nest of robins chirping outside his window, and as they had begun the slow descent into the Foundry, a hawk had screeched in the distance. 

A Riavani seeress or an Orth ranger would have called that an omen, but in civilized Kirkwall they were above such childish things. 

It had been horrible. Hawke was a big man, a strong man, who swung his axe like he’s been doing it his whole life—(he had been: Malcolm had taught him to defend himself using the woodaxe when he was not yet eight summers, the first time that they had to run and he was not small enough to be carried on his parents’ backs) – but his true strength was always his mercy. 

Living in Kirkwall was slowly draining that mercy from him, and Anders could hardly blame him. He felt much the same himself, some days. 

When they confronted Quentin, Anders wanted to scream, wanted to beat him for proving the worst of them, wanted to chastise him for being such a Maker-damned _stereotype_ , like something from a Nevarran novel. How could this man think he had the right? Madness, probably, but he had been a Necromancer before that, and Anders had enough in him of the good Anderfels Chantry boy to feel a shiver of revulsion at necromancers, whatever their intentions. 

Then there was screaming, and fighting, and through it all Anders trained his eyes on Hawke, healing him as he slashed and kicked his way through skeletons and shades, Anders casting fire and ice with one hand as he watched the large warrior carefully. He was fighting recklessly, with emotion rather than finesse, and for all that Anders had his eyes trained on him he had his eyes trained on Leandra. 

When everyone was dead, Leandra fell to the ground, and Hawke screamed, and anguished sound. “Help her!” He shouted at Anders as he ran forward to pull her body into his arms. “Heal her, come on!”

Anders stumbled forward, hearing the reassuring litany that Hawke was mumbling as he pulled his mother close to his chest, rocking her tightly. He cast a wisp to check her over, and frowned at the results. 

“There’s nothing I can do. The magic was keeping her alive.” 

“Then use _your_ magic and bloody well _heal her_!” 

“I can’t—Hawke, it’s a different magic, there isn’t enough left of her own body to heal. You need a necromancer, not a healer, and that’s not any kind of life at all.” 

“I don’t care!” Hawke shouted, holding her closer. “I don’t care. If it would save her right now I’d make a deal with a demon myself.” 

“It wouldn’t save her,” Merril said softly. “Only the Creators can help her now.” 

Isabella stepped forward, gripping his shoulder tightly. “I’m so sorry, sweet thing. Best let her go.” 

Garrett sobbed, and buried his head in Leandra’s neck. “No… mother. You can’t go.” 

Leandra stirred, and coughed. In a weak, thready voice, half fade-touched already, she said “It’s alright, my son. I knew you would come.” 

Garrett started. “Don’t—don’t move, mother. We can find a way to help you. Anders—“ 

“—I heard him as well as you did,” she said softly. “It’s _alright_ , my darling boy. He would have kept me down here forever. Thank you for that.” 

Hawke bowed his head, tears dripping off his nose. “I—I failed you.” 

“My silly boy,” Leandra said, her thin voice affectionate. “You could never fail me. Don’t weep, child. There are so many worse things than death. I will get to see your father again, after all. And Carver.” 

Hawke shook his head quickly, like a child sure they are being tricked. “No—no, mother, you musn’t go!” 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said softly. Slowly, and with jerky, unnatural movements, she raised one corpse-coloured hand and stroked Garrett’s face. “My darling boy. I am _so_ proud of you, my love. You’ve gotten so strong…”

“But I couldn’t save you,” Hawke blurted through tears. “All my strength and might mean nothing if I can’t even save you!” 

Leandra smiled as she closed her eyes. “You are a very silly boy indeed if you think that I meant your sword arm.” Her hand dropped, and she sagged against Hawke’s chest. She was gone. 

Anders stepped forward automatically, raising his hand to say the same prayers he would if he were in the clinic. Hawke flinched and pulled her body away from him. 

“ _Don’t_ ,” he hissed, his words laced with venom. “You couldn’t heal her, so don’t you fucking _dare_ say pretty words after the fact to make it better. She’s _Lady Leandra Amell_ , not one of your pieces of Darktown _trash_. She deserves better than you.” 

Anders felt the words hit him full in the chest, but he only nodded. If Hawke needed to yell, needed to scream, needed to _hurt_ \-- well. It would hardly be the first time someone had used him as an outlet for their pain. 

“I’ll send a Chantry Sister down, then,” he said evenly. “They can take the—Her. They can take care of her.” 

Hawke made no sign that he had heard him, and so Anders nodded for him, and turned on his heel and left.

**Author's Note:**

> Rickets, which is what Anders has in this story, is caused by a Vitamin D deficiency in children or in pregnant women. Its symptoms include bowed legs, which were called knock-knees until the 19th century, brittle bones, scoliosis, clawed fingers and toes, clubbed feet, a triangular chest (described by some mediaeval sources as 'birdlike') and a square head. It is often considered to be a disease of the industrial revolution, as in Western Europe it was at this point that poverty and child labour in factories combined to deprive children of sunlight, however rickets was first described by Soranus of Ephesus, and its symptoms may be found throughout the world. It was and is particularly common in northern cultures and amongst Aboriginal and First Nations people in the Northern hemisphere as a result of the lack of daylight and the poor access to foods containing Vitamin D. In the 18th century rickets was seen as a disease of poverty, and so like syphillis was given derogatory names referencing that cultures rivals, i.e, in 17th century France both rickets _and_ syphillis were called 'the English disease', which must have been terribly confusing, especially as syphillis, like rickets, can be passed to a newborn baby by their mother.  
>  As an adult, childhood rickets and its co-morbid conditions like scoliosis , if uncorrected, can cause severe disability, intense neuropathic pain, and arthritis. Adults who survived rickets are also more likely to get osteomalacia, which is the adult form of rickets and for which brittle bones and joint pain are the most common conditions.  
> Interestingly, the bit about being able to see your nerves spasm during a lightning storm is something that happens to me. It is genuinely unnerving. 
> 
> The diseases Anders references that are common in Kirkwall during the winter are the common-names used in early modern Britain (15th-16th century) and which in some cases were in use right up until the 20th century or even now. For example, my grandmother still calls gastroenteritis or gastrointestinal infection 'dysentery', and a friend who is a medical student has treated patients in their 90s who still refer to pneuominia as the 'winter fever'.  
> The names used in this story are: winter fever, morphew, bronze jack, jail fever, cholera, and dysentery.  
> The modern terms for these illnesses are: pneumonia, scurvy, yellow fever, typhus and typhoid, cholera, and gastroenteritis. These diseases can kill and are very infectious, but may be prevented easily with access to clean drinking water, shelter, and a sewage system that does not allow fecal matter to contaminate drinking water or living spaces. The people of Darktown do not have these things, and nor do many people living right now-- unfortunately, these disaeses can also be divided into those that make you choke yourself to death or kill you with fever (pneumonia, yellow fever, typhus), and those that make you shit yourself to death (typhoid, cholera, gastroenteritis). In both cases they are easily treated if the patient's fever can be managed and they can remain hydrated.


End file.
